Broadcasting
Media consumers have a need for additional services. When people watch a television program, they would like to have access to related complementary data, such as stocks and products prices, traffic and weather conditions, athletic records on Olympic Games or updated football scores. The complementary information associated with a broadcast program may consist of the biography of a player in a football match, an historical background on events cited on a news program or the recipe of an apple cake on a cooking show.
On the consumers side, people are looking for more information or data about what they hear or view in the media. Consumers would like to have access to special services associated with advertised products such as product features, location of points of sales, or discounts or coupons.
On the media providers side, new sources of profit are expected by extending the quantity and quality of services and information provided to consumers of television or radio programs. Advertisers are looking for new and more effective forms of advertisement.
To provide these services, the problem with conventional television or radio systems is that the information is continuously broadcast in the same direction from a transmitter to multiple receivers, from a provider to multiple consumers. Communication is limited to only one direction without any exchange of information with consumers. People cannot interact with the programs to seek additional information or services. Because the information is continuously broadcast, most of this information is lost if not memorized or recorded for a later playback.
On-line Services on the Web
In our society, independently of the massive development of radio and television, on-line services such as those provided by the World Wide Web (i.e., the Web) have rapidly emerged and are now widely available. Such on-line services based on the Internet provide access to a huge amount of information on an interactive basis. The Internet is a global network of computers. The Internet connects computers based on a variety of different operating systems or languages using a language referred to as TCP/IP (“Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol”). With the increasing size and complexity of the Internet, tools have been developed to help find information on the network, often called “navigators” or “navigation systems”. The World Wide Web (“WWW” or “the Web”) is a recent superior navigation system. The Web is:                an Internet-based navigation system,        an information distribution and management system for the Internet, and        a dynamic format for communicating on the Web.The Web integrates images, text, audio and video. A user on the Web using a graphical user interface can transparently communicate with different computers on the system, and different system applications, and different information formats for files and documents including, for example, text, sound and graphics.        
Internet and the Web is transforming our society. They offer to millions of users the opportunity to access and exchange information and to communicate between each other. Currently, on-line systems on the Web offer a variety of different services to users, for instance, private message services, electronic commerce, news, real-time games, access to electronic databases, electronic newsletters, business-to-business transactions, or job placement services. But, even if such on-line services are now available, the searching and finding of the relevant information on the Web remains an arduous task, sometimes taking hours, even for experienced users.
Internet is essentially an open, multi-point to multi-point network, where each user can select and retrieve different information from many different servers. Today, most on-line interactions with the Web occur merely through textual inputs for instance by entering URLs (Uniform Resource Locator) names, by entering search words on search tools, by activating textual hyperlinks on HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) documents. Even if in a near future, the development of audiovisual interfaces (e.g., human speech interfaces, Web-phone integration) will render textual inputs less and less dominant in on-line environments, there is a good chance that the Web remains user unfriendly due to its massiveness, its lack of organization, and its randomness. Simply stated, in the Web there is no order or direction. Information remains most of the time hard to find and, even worse, in a foreseeable future, it will remain a difficult task to find the required information into the desired context.
Interactive Television and WebTV
Today, the Web continues its expansion in the mass media as indicated by the fact that Internet addresses are shown up regularly in commercials. The use of television sets as terminals for accessing the Web is increasing every year. A trend due to this development is the integration of Web and TV by transmitting along with a video signal a Web page showing for example statistics concerning a player during a sports game. The integration of Web and television, known as WebTV has been made possible by the arrival of digital TV. The data processing technology and the transmission technology used for the television and the Web are converging. Now TV sets are more and more “intelligent”, and this intelligence requires the upgrading of hardware in particular for supporting the Web functions. In fact, many of the services associated with WebTV are available today on the Web.
The most obvious trend for the Web on television (i.e., the WebTV) is to integrate the Web in the broadcast and cable television. The most important point of design is to know what program the user is watching. In this regard today, WebTV works with selected television producers to provide hyperlinks during programs or commercials. These hyperlinks are used to access additional information concerning the television programs through the WebTV service.
In the effort for converging interactive services and media, a consortium of communication companies promotes a set of standards for interactive television and WebTV known as “enhanced television”. For example, the Advanced Television Enhancement Forum (ATVEF) is a cross-industry alliance of companies in the field of cable networks, radio and television, consumer electronics, and personal computers. This alliance of companies has defined some protocols for a television based on the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) to allow content creators to deliver enhanced programs over all forms of transport (analog, digital, cable, and satellite) to any “intelligent” receiver. The ATVEF group is committed to accelerate the creation and distribution of enhanced television programs so that consumers can receive programs in the least expensive and most convenient possible way. Details on the ATVEF are available at: atvef.com.
Despite its considerable support (e.g., Disney, CNN, NBC, Intel, Deutsche Telecom, Nokia, iXL, set-top boxes manufacturer Pace Micro, and Microsoft, among other), the ATVEF standards are not the only standards for interactive television and WebTV. A wide array of standards such as the U.S.-based Advanced Television Systems Committee and Digital Video Broadcasting in Europe are looking into issues such as, for example, how to advance TV through the use of Sun Microsystem's Java language. Sun Microsystems who owns the OpenTV, is among these who haven't signed on to ATVEF standards, in contrast with Microsoft, one of the founders of the ATVEF effort. OpenTV is emphasizing the use of Java in television systems to address the issue of making enhanced TV services available across multiple devices. While ATVEF focuses on the display of content on multiple platforms, JavaTV, the software sponsored by OpenTV, focuses on hardware compatibility.
There are other standardization efforts which can potentially have an effect on the market. For example CableLabs, the industry's research consortium, attempts to set hardware and software standards to enable the execution of applications on any platform. W3C, the Internet User's Consortium, has initiated a forum involving the television community and the Internet community. The theme is “Real-Time Multimedia and the Web”. The technologies that may be adopted by the ATT company may also influence the future market trends.
With so many ongoing initiatives, the problem is that today many people in the broadcast industry don't really know which direction the market is going. Quoting Jonathan Taplin, Intertainer's co-chief executive: “We believe the history of interactive TV is just about to be written. What we need is a common language to write to”.
Also, in an article on Jun. 17, 1999, on CNET News.com, entitled “Rivalries, technologies confuse set-top market”, Jim Davis summarized the situation as follows: “Despite the homilies and Industrial Age metaphors espoused at a big cable convention here, (in Chicago) many roadblocks still stand in the way of mass use of the new TV set-top boxes, interactive television, and other services”.
More recently, articles like the one entitled: “Will interactive internet television become a two-headed monster?”, by Gary Chapman, published on the Technology section of the Tribune Media Services, Copyright © 2001 Nando Media, Copyright © 2001 Los Angeles Times Syndicate, dated on Mar. 29, 2001, on: nandotimes.com/technology/story/0,1643,500468156-500716006-503964418-0,00.html illustrates this endless debate, turmoil and lack of consensus about the future directions of WebTV and, the confusion that today exists about how in the future interactive services and media may converge.
Providing On-line Services on Television or Radio
Unlike the multi-point to multi-point Web network, radio or television are primarily single-point to multi-point networks. Every user receives the same content from a single broadcasting station. The main problem is to provide “two-way” web-like capabilities in a conventional (non-interactive) broadcast system. Until today, most television and radio receivers were linked to interactive information providers in a very limited way, briefly described hereinafter.
Nowadays, many television and radio broadcasters display an Internet address to make inquiries concerning the program that is retransmitted. Accessing the Internet requires a computer. The user must manually enter the Internet address in the computer. Some other systems allow the exchange of digital information with the viewer by combining this information with the television signal. However, such systems limits the access to a single information source and this source is entirely under the control of the broadcast or cable television operator.
In fact, until recently, there was no way for producers of television or radio programs to create hyperlinks to access complementary information related to a broadcast program. The systems proposed in this regard require the transmission of the complementary information in a secondary signal, concurrently with the retransmission of the main program. The radio auditors or television viewers must be equipped with special decoder circuits for recovering this information. Other proposals are based on transmitting identification of television programs or URLs of hyperlinked information associated to television programs during the vertical blanking interval (VBI) period. Special decoders are also needed to use such methods.
Television closed captions are captions that are hidden in the television video signal, invisible without a special decoder. The place where they are hidden is called line 21 of the vertical blanking interval (VBI). A law in the United States called the Television Decoder Circuitry Action of 1990 requires since July 1993, that all televisions manufactured for sale in the U.S. contain a built-in caption decoder if the television picture tube is 13″ or larger. TELETEXT or Supertext captions for the hearing impaired are commonly transmitted by this means. A tutorial of Vertical Blanking Interval (VBI) systems, is available on: msc-smc.ec.gc.ca/nwsd/awps/vbinfo_e.cfm. A specification on how to send URLs over Line21 VBI, has been published by the Computer and Electronics Marketing Association (CEMA), USA.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,125,172 entitled “Apparatus and method for initiating a transaction having acoustic data receiver that filters human voice”, U.S. Pat. No. 6,098,106 entitled “Method for controlling a computer with an audio signal” or U.S. Pat. No. 5,119,507 entitled “Receiver apparatus and methods for identifying broadcast audio program selections in a radio broadcast system”, disclose systems and methods for embedding information into audio signals.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,097,441 entitled “System for dual-display interaction with integrated television and Internet content”, U.S. Pat. No. 6,075,568 entitled “Apparatus of storing URL information transmitted via vertical blanking interval of television signal”, U.S. Pat. No. 6,058,430 entitled “Vertical blanking interval encoding of Internet addresses for integrated television/internet devices”, U.S. Pat. No. 6,018,768 entitled “Enhanced video programming system and method for incorporating and displaying retrieved integrated Internet information segments”, U.S. Pat. No. 5,818,441 entitled “System and method for simulating two-way connectivity for one way data streams”, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,761,606, entitled “Media online services access via address embedded in video or audio program” disclose various systems and methods based on the transmission of the information in the vertical blanking interval (VBI) for analog signals, or in dedicated slots for digital signals, according to protocols such as MPEG.
Different systems and methods for embedding hyperlinks or for encoding information into the same images or on selected portions of images have been disclosed for instance in U.S. Pat. No. 6,076,104 entitled “Video data Integration system using image data and associated hypertext links”, U.S. Pat. No. 6,061,719 entitled “Synchronized presentation of television programming and web content”, U.S. Pat. No. 6,018,764 entitled “Mapping uniform resource locators to broadcast addresses in a television signal”, U.S. Pat. No. 5,987,509 entitled “System and method for displaying active uniform network resource locators during playback of a media file or media broadcast”, U.S. Pat. No. 5,973,685 entitled “Scheme for the distribution of multimedia follow-up information”, U.S. Pat. No. 5,841,978 entitled “Network linking method using steganographically embedded data objects”, U.S. Pat. No. 5,832,223 entitled “System, method and device for automatic capture of Internet access information in a broadcast signal for use by an Internet access device”, U.S. Pat. No. 5,818,935 entitled “Internet enhanced video system”, U.S. Pat. No. 5,778,181 entitled “Enhanced video programming system and method for incorporating and displaying retrieved integrated Internet information segments”, U.S. Pat. No. 5,262,860 entitled “Method and system communication establishment utilizing captured and processed visually perceptible data within a broadcast video signal”, U.S. Pat. No. 5,189,630 entitled “Method for encoding and broadcasting information about live events using computer pattern matching techniques”, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,977,455 entitled “System and process for VCR scheduling”. In all these patents, the extraction of encoded information requires specialized, dedicated decoders or TV set-top boxes.
Different interaction systems and methods by means of two-way communication protocols for web televisions (WebTVs), interactive television and channel-hyperlinking, using dedicated specialized hardware (e.g., using a television set-top box) and specialized software are disclosed for instance in U.S. Pat. No. 6,073,171 entitled “Two-way communication protocol for a web television”, U.S. Pat. No. 5,982,445 entitled “Hypertext markup language protocol for television display and control”, U.S. Pat. No. 5,961,603 entitled “Access system and method for providing interactive access to an information source through a networked distribution system”, U.S. Pat. No. 5,929,850 entitled “Interactive television system and method having on-demand web-like navigational capabilities for displaying requested hyperlinked web-like still images associated with television content”, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,929,849 entitled “Integration of dynamic universal resource locators with television presentation”.
A rather different method for enabling an auditor or a viewer to access additional information related to both radio and television programs, based on the general principle of using the reception time of a broadcast program to obtain supplemental information is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,795 entitled “Apparatus and methods for accessing information relating to radio and television programs” (Mankowitz). In order to clearly distinguish U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,795 from the present invention, as well as for providing a point of departure for analyzing the other types of systems of the prior art, essential features of U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,795 will be discussed in detail.
Basically, U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,795 discloses and apparatus and method for ordering supplemental information about programs playing at a broadcast receiver. One embodiment is a method for providing information to a user from an information depository. The method includes the steps of reproducing in the vicinity of each of a plurality of users, programs from one of a plurality of broadcasting stations, recording upon command by a user, an identification of a station and a time of a program on the station for which supplemental information is desired by the user, entering the recorded station identification and time into one of a plurality of information exchange terminals, coupling the information exchange terminal to the information depository to transmit information therebetween; and identifying a correspondence between the entered station identification and time and a program in a station log to obtain the desired supplemental information. The method additionally includes the steps of compiling a station log of stations, program times, and program identifiers for programs on the stations and mapping the program identifiers in the log to supplemental information relating to specific programs.
While U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,795 preferably uses “local times” of transmitters and receivers, the system and method object of the present invention, is based on the use of a common Universal-Time reference for both transmitters and receivers, such as for example the Universal Time Co-ordinated (UTC) time or the Global Positioning System (GPS) time. The principle of the invention is the following: transmitters and receivers must be synchronized by means of a unique Universal-Time reference and timing system independent of the respective location of each transmitter and each receiver. Otherwise, if a receiver is located far from the transmitter (e.g., on a different time-zone), a system using “local times” like the one disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,795 will fail without the prior re-synchronization of the receiver to the transmitter. To perform this re-synchronization, the receiver must know in advance the time-zone of the transmitter. The problem is that the time-zone of the transmitter is unknown in some cases. A border case for illustrating this difficulty is the example of a mobile user receiving broadcast programs from different remote broadcasting stations when flying across different time-zones.
As described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,795, transmitters (i.e., broadcasting stations) are responsible of synchronizing receivers, for example, by means of audible DTMF (Dual-Tone Multi Frequency) tones broadcast by a local station at each hour of the day. So users can synchronize their receiver using its internal radio circuit or using another radio for detecting the audible tone and resetting the system clock. Alternatively, U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,795 proposes for synchronizing receivers, to download a synchronizing DTMF tone to the receiver via a telephone link. The proposed synchronization mechanism limits the capability of the receiver to be synchronized “at any moment” with the transmitter, independently of sporadic receptions (“a few times each day”, or “hourly”) of timing signals sent by the transmitters, or by an independent timing authority responsible of synchronizing both, transmitters and receivers. The alternative of making a telephone call for transmitting a synchronization signal involves additional complexity and limits the efficiency and usefulness of the system. Also, under certain realistic circumstances, the reception and decoding of audible timing tones may be unreliable and prone to errors. Unlike U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,795, the system and method according to the present application is based on an Universal-Time timing system, preferably the Global Positioning System (GPS) time, for synchronizing transmitters and receivers. The present invention makes possible that both transmitters and receivers are “always” synchronized according to a same reference time, without the need of a human intervention.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,795, there is no precise definition of the notion of “distance” for selecting a program based on the time recorded by the user. Basically, U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,795 describes a system on which a single selection of a program can be made (i.e., a unique “hyperlink” can be activated during a program), based on the user's selection time. On this system programs are sequential and can be activated on non overlapping time intervals, thus the user is forced to act promptly for correctly selecting an interesting item during the program, before the next program could start. If the program that is being received has a very short duration (e.g., 30 seconds), and the user hesitates or delays by any reason the decision to make a selection, a wrong selection may be made. Thus, with this method, a problem occurs if the next program starts before the user selects the previous program.
Unlike U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,795, the concept of hyperlinks is essential in the present invention, as it will be further discussed. Each program comprises one or a plurality of hyperlinks. Each hyperlink in the program is associated with an hyperlink “start time” and an hyperlink “end time”, (i.e., an hyperlink becomes “alive” during a finite universal-time interval) and may be recovered and activated only when the user makes a selection during this time interval. This mechanism takes into account the “temporal fuzziness” effects due to delays on selections and variations on program transmission times. Overlaps of time intervals during which the hyperlinks of the “successive programs” are “alive” are defined and implemented. Even when a user makes a “late” selection, it will still be possible to recover the information associated with the desired interesting topic found on the received program.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,795, only one information at a time, associated with a single selected program can be retrieved from a single transmitter, content producer or operator. Unlike U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,795, the present invention defines and implements overlaps on time of multiple hyperlinks for the same program. The user can retrieve multiple different data, from different information providers, with a single selection. For example, if a user watches a film and, at the time of the selection, the user was watching on the TV receiver a scene played by two actors, by selecting this scene, the user may be “linked” to two different biographies, each one provided by a different Web server (i.e., having different URLs).
Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,795 basically discloses a proprietary system where information associated with the programs on a broadcast channel is provided by a single source. The information is stored and supplied by a single information provider, such as the broadcast television operator. Unlike U.S. Pat. No. 5,703,795, the present invention discloses an open system for accessing on the Web additional information associated with the radio or television programs the people receive.
Therefore, today there is a need to provide new convenient, universal, and easy mechanisms for enabling people receiving a broadcast television or radio program to effectively select and access complementary information for which they have some interest.
While during the last years, interactive systems have been developed for increasing and improving the level of interaction with users and for providing more information and learning or entertainment opportunities, today, important sources of information such as those we can find in the Web, still remain inaccessible from traditional broadcast systems (i.e., using conventional, one-way, TV and radio broadcast systems and passive TVs and radio receivers). Hence, there is a need for a simple system and method to provide web-like capabilities in a primarily broadcast environment.
In particular, today there is a need for producers to create hyperlinks, from segments or sequences retransmitted on radio or television programs, to relevant data on the Web in such a form that, without physically transmitting these hyperlinks embedded on conventional one-way broadcast signals and thus, without modifying conventional transmitters or receivers, these hyperlinks can be selected by radio auditors or television viewers during the reception of a program and be activated for accessing related information or services throughout the Web.
Moreover, there is a need for a system able to operate independently of the relative positions of receivers and transmitters, without having to synchronize receivers and transmitters.